A location based service (LBS) refers to a fixed location service of a mobile telephony provider, who supplies information agreed as to the place of location of the user. In this connection, the place of location of the user and the place of his mobile terminal are identical. Mobile telephony providers usually make available the current position of the mobile terminal at the time of the call. The position is given, in this instance, by the mobile telephony cell in which the mobile terminal has logged in. Each telephony cell has a unique identification number, which makes possible a rough position finding of the terminal. The position finding accuracy made available depends on the size of the mobile telephony cell, and in an urban area this is about 100 meters in mobile telephony standard GSM.
According to the related art, the use of location-based services takes place mostly via an SMS dialog between the user and the service provider. As an alternative to that, the use via Web Dialog/WAP Dialog is also possible. In the first-named case, the user sends, for example, an SMS (short message service) via the mobile terminal, with the message “money” to a service call number, and receives by SMS a list of the nearest automatic teller machines. However, this type of utilization is rather cumbersome and tedious. In certain situations of use, such as behind the steering wheel of a motor vehicle, such a utilization is not even possible.
In United States Patent Publication No. 2003/0036379 A1, a method and a system for using location-based services for mobile terminals is provided. That reference appears to concern the mobile telephony network which constantly transmits information about available location-based services in the current area of location of the terminal. To do this, for example, the mobile telephony network radiates an indicator signal to the mobile terminal, which shows symbols (pictograms) on the display of the mobile terminal that correspond to the available location-based services. The type of location-based service offered may be recognizable from the configuration of the symbols. The user now has the possibility of making a selection of location-based services that interest him, and that are currently available, in order to use them. However, there is some difficulty in distinguishing accurately between location-based services supplied, if very many location-based services of different contents are offered in the symbol display. Further, the size of the display of the mobile terminal limits the number of available location-based services that may be seen at a glance.